


Baby Clothes, Never Worn

by skullmoss



Category: Fallout (Video Games), Fallout 4
Genre: Character Study, Drug Use, Gen, Gen Work, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, Past Character Death, Postpartum Depression, References to Depression
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-17
Updated: 2016-09-17
Packaged: 2018-08-15 13:27:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 921
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8058130
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/skullmoss/pseuds/skullmoss
Summary: The past is lost. The memories are still there. But she doesn't really know how to feel about it.





	

It’s strange, looting her own house for supplies. But it happens once in awhile, when collections out in the field are hard and there’s a spark of a memory from a few years ago (hundred of years ago… _God_ ) of something she kept hidden in a jar left in a loose floorboard…

Well. You learn to hide things early when your neighbors stare at you and your husband questionably. Dedicated American soldier or not, born on American soil (and died on American soil… _she won’t think about that_ ) a Chinese-American was still _Chinese_  so when they had moved to Sanctuary there had been stares and Nate had said to hide fail-safe cash in case things got worse before they got better.

But Ilya’s not looking for that. What’s been in the floorboards is said and gone, pre-war money is useless, her grandfather’s old bottlecap collection a goldmine. She’s simply…rummaging. Looking through old drawers, fingers lingering on photographs that survived the bombings, of her mother, father…baby pictures…

They need cloth for blankets for some settlers in need, and she fingers old baby clothes never worn, given as gifts. Hancock’s lingering in the phantom of her house as she searches it, leaning in the doorway, his presence a comforting smell of mothballs and bad cigarette smoke as he smokes and watches her.

“You should keep those,” he says, voice strained as he manages to hold the smoke deep in his lungs as he speaks. He exhales, “For the kid. When you find him.”

Ilya laughs, almost bitterly as she bites the inside of her cheek. She always felt strange after having Shaun, throughout her pregnancy honestly, a strange disconnect but an obligation, and it’s hard to find the right sort of feelings for the clothes she’s holding in her hands. It’s mixed. Makes her nauseous. He’s all she has from _then_ besides Codsworth, and at times it doesn’t even feel like she’s looking for her child but moreso looking for what had been lost between the centuries she had been asleep.

“Babies grow fast, John. And it’s been…” _months…longer…_  “ _awhile_. They won’t fit him anymore.” She stuffs them away for later. “Might as well get use out of them for others in need. Holding on to old memories is…” _a waste_  she wants to say, but she’s still looking at an old photograph of her parents, realizing over and over that they’re dead and have been dead for longer than she's been awake.

“Don’t I know it, sister.” Hancock says, not missing a beat and filling the gaping hole of her sentence himself. He lingers, staring at the crib before looking back to her, and he’s not sure what to do when she gets like this, caught up in herself, in her thoughts. Normally he’d reach for something but the Chems don’t do much for her anymore (Russian resistance, she jokes. Hard to get high, even  _harder_  to get drunk).

They don’t do much for him either anymore but he still tries. So he fingers an inhaler of Jet, wondering if it’s worth it to offer when he knows she’ll just say no, but before he can even try Ilya straightens her posture, tucking the photographs away, and moving past the crib without a word, heading towards what had once been her washroom.

He stays in the baby's room as he hears her rummaging elsewhere, huffing the Jet for himself and chasing it back with a puff of his cigarette, staring glassy eyed and high at a room that means little to him but holds a strange weight of knowing there had been another life here once. His thoughts move slowly, sluggishly; he can’t imagine Ilya as a housewife as the old books and comics and radio shows and holotapes present it. But here it is, the skeletons of it.

But again, she can’t see _him_  as what he had been. Some kid in Diamond City with smooth skin and hair and a nose and a brother who had been a _jerk_  in the way older brothers were, but not in the way that people know Mayor McDonough now.

He groans out loud at the thought, as the buzz of Jet disappears as quickly as it came, and he realizes that he doesn’t hear Ilya anymore. There’s no fear of her going off without him, and no worry about whether they’ve been ambushed (Sanctuary is as it's named for). But still he goes to find her and sees her still in the washroom, crouched near the dryer, holding old pants in one hand and the glittering of something silver in the other.

Dog tags.

She’s staring at them with the same strange placid look she had stared at the crib and baby clothes, but her thumb runs over the name and Hancock doesn’t need to see because he knows the name. Another phantom. Frozen dead underground only a few miles away.

“The war changed him.” Ilya’s voice is monotone as she speaks, not looking up at the ghoul shadowing her. “He…and Shaun…I–” she stops herself and _this_  is something that Hancock can’t fill in so he stays quiet, uncertain.

Ilya shakes her head, rolling her eyes and there’s the glint of something wet at her cheek even though she doesn’t seem sad. She fingers the dog tags as she did with the baby clothes, and stands, wiping her cheek with the dirty back of her hand before turning to face Hancock.

“Let’s go. I got what I needed.”


End file.
